On Persephone's Island: A Sicilian Journal by Mary Taylor Simeti

This journal by American expat Mary Taylor Simeti chronicles a year in her life in Sicily.  Married to a Sicilian and with two children, they live the fanciful life of those who ponder moving to a Mediterranean idyll.  The journal tells her story some twenty years into her life in Sicily, set in the early 1980s.

Splitting their year between the aging beauty of Palermo and the rustic fecundity of their small, but working, farm nearby, life vacillates between the solemn ritual of Sicilian festivals, familial joy, corrupt government, Mafia killings and sweet ennui.

Simeti ponders her life as that of Persephone, lost between two worlds, not quite American, but not quite Sicilian.

Life on the farm, not surprisingly, surrounds them with fauna, something that Simeti glories in.  And although I am ignorant of such things, it underscores the importance of Sicily to ancient Rome as a primary breadbasket.  

Thought not a travel book, it chronicles family outings to some of the island's most popular destinations, fortunately from the perspective of someone who knows her classics and the literature of the island.  Palermo, Segesta, Trapani, Erice, Ortigia, Enna and many more receive their due, in a fashion not found in any travel books that I know.

The book sets a certain tone to our upcoming trip to Sicily, presenting a comprehensive, real life 20th century view on what to expect, the good, the bad and the glorious.

The Greek Epic Cycle and it's Ancient Reception

This was a joy.  Thanks to books like this I'm digging deeper into Greek mythology than I ever would have anticipated.

My main takeaway is the vastness of the corpus of Greek epic.  

We know it centered on Homer and his Iliad and Odyssey.  But as this study underscores, although those two works were the shining stars, they were a tiny portion of the sum total.

And I just can't say enough about these Cambridge companion books as I read more and more of them.  They dig so much deeper than anything else I've read; they challenge me, occasionally leaping far over my head, but mostly pull me further into these fascinating topics.

And now for something completely different, we are starting to talk about visiting China in the fall of 2027, which has deep implications for my reading over the next 18 months.  Very exciting.  More to come!

Archimedes, Fulcrum of Science by Nicholas Nicastro

The book was fine, but perhaps it's misleading to even write a full-length book about a figure for whom so little is known.  With the dearth of sources, Nicastro was forced to write at length about the time in which Archimedes lived, the people who he associated with, and events from his age, without much evidence of his actual life.

And unfortunately this resulted in a larger dose of speculation than I would normally expect in a biography.

Anyhow, Archimedes was a great man whose modern reputation is muted as compared to his actual influence on science and the progress of civilization.

Onward.

Proto by Laura Spinney

I'm fascinated by linguistics, but this book was a bit of a struggle for me.  I would like to think that the problem was that the book's level of expertise falls too far advanced for the lay person, while also too elementary for the specialist.

But the true problem lies in the fact that I just don't know enough about the topic to fully understand it.  My poor understanding of the geography of central Asia and eastern Europe, in particular, made it difficult to follow at times.  My lack of knowledge of pre-history, in the realm of anthropology, didn't help.

But still, my appreciation for the science of linguistics remains undiminished.  Its ability to track the movement of languages by the movement of people and their cultures (and vice versa) is truly remarkable, a topic I need to explore further as time permits.

The Rise & Fall of Alexandria (again!)

I've just re-read this book, and enjoyed it as least much as I did the first time back in 2008.

Perhaps the biggest difference with this second reading is that I've now visited so many more of the ancient sites referenced in the book, most notably across modern Turkey, including Byzantium/Constantinople, Ephesus, Pergamum, Didyma, Perge and more.  

Alexandria's prominence in the Hellenistic period also converges with that of Syracuse, which we will be visiting later this year on our trip through Sicily.  Many of the great thinkers of the era passed back and forth between those two great cities.

Glad to be taking this sojourn through the Hellenistic!

Seeking Sicily by John Keahey

As with The Leopard, great writing uncovers the secrets and nuances that help enrich my travel experiences.  And well-written travel essays are a part of that magic process for me.

While some such essays are too obscure and allegoric for me to fully appreciate, this one struck the right balance, with short, descriptive but easy to understand stories.

Keahey visited Sicily four times within one year, visiting it's largest cities and it's smallest villages, always uncovering people's stories from the past that help paint a touching, often painful, but culturally rich picture of this elusive island.  

The Leopard by Giuseppe Di Lampedusa

I'm really learning that literature provides a powerful pathway to understanding a culture.  This was re-enforced with my reading of The Leopard, one of the most famous of Sicilian novels.

Set in the period following the unification of Italy and it's incorporation of Sicily as part of that new nation, it tells the heartfelt story of an aristocrat and his family enduring that transition.

Don Fabrizio - the patron of the Salinas family - watches Sicily's identity fade as it's swallowed by Italy, just as he endures his own fading identity and slow march to death.

It was beautifully told, a poignant story that will help me appreciate Sicily on a deeper level in our upcoming trip.